I wrote this Naruto fanfic once. I don't know what happened. I blacked out for a week and all of a sudden there were 70,000 words written on the computer in front of me, and I had no idea how they got there or how I wrote them.

But I keep reading it and I think to myself, "Hey, maybe this would be worth posting somewhere", so I put it up on fanfiction.net, cuz you know... You can get anything on fanfiction.net, as long as it doesn't have genitalia in it*

genetalia described in anything but the most obtuse, indecipherable and adjective-plagued manner possible, that is

.

And then in a month, there are 8000 comments. Some of them were really intense, like really, really intense. They were kind of freaking me out. I found out later that one person started this death cult with maybe two dozen of my "fans". They started sending me emails from their "base camp" in Japan. They told me how they would sneak into people's apartments to brutally murder anyone named "Sasuke". It pains me every time I hear about another Sasuke murder because I know it's all my fault. It's like I die a little on the inside too.

One of those death cult members showed up on my front doorstep a few days ago, presenting me with the half-rotted head of one of these "Sasukes". How did she know where I lived? And more importantly, how did she get that past customs?

So yes, I have a following. And their eyes follow me every time I walk to the bathroom or make myself a peanut butter and banana sandwich late at night.

I suppose I've got a bit of a following in terms of readers. I get a reasonable number of hits/reviews at least and people have gone to the lengths of putting together TV Tropes pages for some of my stories and even an full scale wiki for one series.

Most fanfics that have been posted on the internet have been read by at least a few people. You need to define "following" better. Perhaps having a following means having reviews posted about your fic. Perhaps it means having more than 500 reviews posted about your fic. Perhaps it means being recommended on TV Tropes. Perhaps it means having its own page on TV Tropes. Perhaps it means having more than 500 hits. Perhaps it means having more than 500 visitors.

Thunderchin: "I'd like to ask how to get a following. Of 500 people, not a goddamn soul can be bothered to comment? What the hell?"

The vast majority of readers don't bother leaving reviews, even the ones that like the story. My story on ff.net with the largest number of hits XSGCOM: Mirror Image has 550 reviews which sounds good until you know it's had 228,966 hits and work out the hit to review ratio!

The same story posted on Tt H (Twisting the Hellmouth) has 421 reviews but some 293,992 hits so it's not just ff.net either I'm afraid. You just have to accept that readers are lazy :-p

Apparently this guy who makes videos on YouTube said one of my Family Guy fanfics is in his Top 5, even though I left it unfinished due to a computer virus wiping out my files. I don't know if I like that because he comes off as a dick in his videos, but it's SOMETHING...

Agreed with Hotpoint, the ratio of people that actually let a review will be always smaller when compared to the number of hits. In my case, it helped me to learn humility (that's a long story), even though my fic has a modest review/chapter ratio and I always see people that doesn't review but support my work.

If we say "has a following" is having more than one hundred reviews, with the majority favorable of the fic, and has more than one hundred people following the fic, I think we can safely say it has a following. That's a fairly reasonable definition.

I sort of wish my fic had a page on TV Tropes, but I don't want to create one myself since it would seem too much like ego stroking.

I went ahead and made a TV Tropes page for my current fanfic. I had the same kind of fear - that it would look like ego-stroking - but aside from the obvious cult classic fanfics (like My Immortal), it seems like most pages for fanfics are made by their authors. Also, it gives me something to direct potential readers to; if they don't like the tropes being used and the ideas behind it, they don't have to read, but if they do, they can contribute to a work page as well.

I had a bit of a fanbase, but as expected with fics that update slowly, it shrunk to a few devoted fans. The irony is that I had the most popularity when I was starting out, when I was a greenhorn. When my skills got better, I didn't get the reaction I wanted when I updated. And my most popular fic is the one with the most flaws.

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